


Following the Thread

by Iseult_Variante



Category: The Bone Key - Sarah Monette
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-18
Updated: 2020-12-18
Packaged: 2021-03-10 20:41:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28143270
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Iseult_Variante/pseuds/Iseult_Variante
Summary: Booth goes where Ratcliffe leads him.
Relationships: Kyle Murchison Booth/John Pelham Ratcliffe
Comments: 12
Kudos: 19
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	Following the Thread

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Snickfic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Snickfic/gifts).



> Thank you to Hope for the beta and to the sprinters on Discord for mutual support!
> 
> Thank you for the chance to write this story and for your fun prompts, Snickfic! I hope you like it, and Happy Yuletide. :)

After the reunion at Brockstone I never thought I would see Ratcliffe again. He had been accommodating, kind even, especially in driving me back to the city. It was still difficult to grasp that he had believed me, no matter his anecdotes about having previously brushed up against the uncanny. Regardless, when we parted I assumed that would be the last I would see of him, unless Dr. Starkweather contrived some other trap to try to draw him into working for the Parrington.

Indeed, arriving outside my building recalled to me that it had been Dr. Starkweather who had insisted I attend the reunion for the purpose of recruiting Ratcliffe. I was in fact so overcome with the dread of having to try to explain to Dr. Starkweather why I had not been able to do so that when I got out of the car I simply stopped, standing on the sidewalk with one hand on the open door. 

“…Booth. _Booth_.” Ratcliffe called.

“I, er…” I blinked at him. He had leaned over, turning to brace his left hand on the passenger’s seat and keeping the right on the wheel. He regarded me calmly, his raptor’s gaze softened slightly, presumably by the lateness of the hour. Even John Pelham Ratcliffe wasn’t at his sharpest after a long drive in the early hours of the morning. 

I shook off my thoughts of Dr. Starkweather’s displeasure. “…Were you saying something?”

The corner of his mouth quirked up. “Nothing important. I can’t say that it was good to see you, exactly, Booth, but it was good working with you.”

“…Likewise?”

Ratcliffe smiled. “Good to hear.” He leaned back and returned his left hand to the gearstick, nodding toward the door to my building. “I hope you can get some rest. Goodnight, Booth.”

I startled into motion, closing the car door. “Goodnight, Ratcliffe.”

And that, as I thought at the time, was that.

I was therefore quite surprised, not quite a week later, to receive a letter from Ratcliffe, delivered to my office at the Parrington.

After brief but cordial greetings—efficient, like the man himself—and a good-humored admonishment not to let Dr. Starkweather know he had written to me, he explained that he had recently had dinner with Peter and Eleanor Ludgate.

_You may recall, I mentioned that Peter refused to return to Brockstone, even though Eleanor encouraged it for the purposes of securing patrons for his art. That after the last time he’d visited he’d started recurrently painting a drowned child? Well, I thought you’d want to know that he’s been able to stop. He’s painting landscapes now. I still don’t think he’ll go back, and I think Eleanor agrees now, after hearing about Palmer and Carleton._

_I hope you don’t mind my telling them, Booth, but I thought Peter needed to know, and I thought you might agree. You’ll have to write to let me know if I was wrong._

Thus began my semi-regular correspondence with Ratcliffe. I felt pressed to reply to assure him that I didn’t mind him telling Peter Ludgate about what had happened at the reunion. He replied a week later with a question about a translation issue in a papyrus fragment he’d been trying to interpret, as well as an anecdote about the director of his midwestern museum.

_I’m not saying I would exchange him for Starkweather, but a few more incidents like this one and I’d have to at least start to think about considering it. Under the right circumstances even the Bactrian camel starts to look good._

I smiled as I read it. I replied to answer his question, of course, and felt compelled to also offer a description of how Dr. Starkweather’s most recent budgetary decisions had managed to thaw a decades-long cold war between Mr. Browne in Restoration and Repairs and Dr. Lind in Entomology over an allegation about escaped termites. The cuts he had made to their departmental accounts had united them in rage against his tyranny.

And so it went: every week Ratcliffe would write with questions and anecdotes. I would feel obliged to at least answer the questions only to find myself including anecdotes of my own. It wasn’t until much later that I looked back and realized that he was very carefully, patiently, and kindly drawing me out.

It was about three months into our correspondence when Ratcliffe left on a dig in Greece. Ratcliffe wrote that he was thrilled at the opportunity; the site had shut down during the war and the subsequent negotiations with the Ottomans but had recently reopened.

_I’m sorry I won’t be able to visit you before I leave,_ he wrote, _and my next letter may be delayed._ I was taken aback to realize how disappointed I was. I had started to grow accustomed to his letters, enough so that I found myself noticing things during my day that I might write to him about—a book he might find of interest, or an article he might enjoy—and anticipating his reactions. I could suddenly see now that we had become, through regular correspondence, something like friends. I was not sure how to feel about this realization.

_I’ll have to leave within the week,_ he wrote, _if I want to convince the director of excavations_ _that I’m serious in my interest. You’d like it, Booth—they’ve already found dozens of inscriptions, pieces of a lost language…_

I had to concede that it did sound interesting. The challenge of deciphering obscure and lost languages was a particular interest of mine, one that I didn’t often get to exercise for pleasure, and I found myself gratified that Ratcliffe remembered.

He concluded with instructions about how to address a letter so that it would find him in his new location. _I know it’s unlikely that I can convince you to visit, Booth, but do write to me. I’d miss it if you didn’t._

Even though I had misgivings, I couldn’t help but write back. It took me longer than usual, second-guessing every word in light of my epiphany, but what else could I do? 

There was a delay before Ratcliffe’s next letter, and although I told myself there was a perfectly reasonable explanation—he himself had predicted as much, and it was only to be expected that there would be a delay in international post; that Ratcliffe would be very busy getting settled at the dig site and might not be able to reply right away—I couldn’t help but wonder if there had been something in what I wrote that communicated my uncertainty in a way that was off-putting.

When Ratcliffe’s next letter arrived, I was initially relieved.

_Everything was going well, at first, but then there were a series of accidents. Not uncommon, of course, but more frequent than I would expect for a dig like this. Tunnel collapses, in particular. Again, not uncommon given climate and the fact that the area is known to be tectonically active. Still—there have been rumors among the local workers but the director and his second-in-command dismiss them as superstition. The foreman’s a local, though, and he seems more concerned._

_And yesterday, well—two of the workers were found dead. What they’d been doing in the tunnels at night I don’t know. It’s not a good idea to go down there at night—the system is very complicated, like a maze. Most of their injuries were consistent with another tunnel collapse, but there were some wounds that looked almost like they’d been stabbed. Deep, narrow, not like a knife—almost like a spear, but there was nothing like that in the debris around them._

_I can’t help but think_ _that this is your sort of problem, Booth. You know I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t think it was serious, but now people have died and I fear more deaths are to come. It’s a lot to ask of you, I know, but please. Get Starkweather to send you. You can promise whatever you need to from me to get him to fund your trip. Ask Claudia, she’ll help._

_Please, Booth. Come to Knossos._

I don’t know what I would have done if Miss Coburn had not chosen that particular moment to come into my office. She knocked and after a brief pause stuck her head in, saying, “Look, Booth, I know it’s your habit to hide out after Starkweather’s latest tirade, but you do have to eat—” She broke off, looking at me. “What’s the matter?”

“I… I… “ I stammered, trying to gather my thoughts. “It’s Ratcliffe.”

“Ratcliffe?” Miss Coburn knew Ratcliffe—they were in the same profession, after all, and it was a small and interconnected one. She even knew about what had happened at Brockstone and about our correspondence since. Like Ratcliffe, she was persistent in the strange pursuit of being my friend. She insisted we had lunch at a minimum of once a week, and she had pried the story out of me. “He’s on a dig in… Crete, wasn’t it? What’s happened?”

Wordlessly, I handed her the letter. Her brow furrowed as she read it through. When she finished, she looked back up at me and asked, “What do you want to do?”

“I don’t know!” I said despairingly, ”I… I should help, but…”

She looked back down at the letter again, then back to me. “It is asking a lot. You’ve don’t travel often, do you?”

I shook my head. 

“Well, he’s right. You’ll need my help. If you want it. Booth…” She looked at me sympathetically. “You don’t have to do this, you know.”

I knew. But I felt like I owed Ratcliffe. For believing me at Brockstone. For his correspondence. For trying, like so few did, to be my friend. 

And even if it weren’t for that, I was afraid that Ratcliffe was right. There would be more deaths at Knossos. I didn’t know what I would be able to do to stop it, but I couldn’t turn away knowingly and live with myself. 

Certainly not with Ratcliffe being one of the people in danger. I reached out and took the letter back. I ran my thumb over the closing. _Please, Booth. Come to Knossos._

“I would… very much appreciate your help with this, Miss Coburn.”

To her credit, given that I was asking her not only to accommodate my inexperience with international travel but also to join me in a dangerous enterprise, Miss Coburn smiled back at me, nodding firmly. “You have it.”

It took surprisingly little time to prepare for our voyage. Miss Coburn’s previous experience was very helpful. I did not often travel, and certainly had never made a transatlantic voyage. The novelty was not something that excited me.

It took just over two weeks to travel to Crete. The first week aboard the streamliner across the Atlantic was surprisingly tolerable. I was happy to discover that I did not suffer from seasickness, and I could avoid company fairly easily except at meals when Miss Coburn was always kind enough to run interference. I could stay in my cabin, only a little claustrophobic, reading for most of the day and then go out on the deck at night. The crew didn’t bother me and the few other nighttime wanderers were, like myself, seeking solitude. 

The train from Calais to Athens, though, was far more crowded and, tall as I was, I did not fit well into the sleeping compartments. Fortunately I was used to going without sleep, but pacing the cars was frowned upon, and the dining cars always seemed to be a hub of social activity. I was very happy to disembark in Athens. It was then only a day-and-a-half trip in a small yacht, which Miss Coburn negotiated for with a local sailor. We arrived at the port in Heraklion around midday to find that Ratcliffe was waiting for us.

It was strange to see him again in person after our months of correspondence since Brockstone. He looked very much as I had pictured him, if a bit more bronzed by the Mediterranean sun, with the energy of the port bustling around him. The only fault in the image was that his left arm was in a sling. As we got closer I thought I could detect some discomfort in the lines around his eyes. As fanciful as it was, he always reminded me of a hunting hawk, and here he was with one wing clipped.

“It’s good to see you, Booth.”

“What happened? Your arm—” I found myself reaching towards him and stopped abruptly. I do not like being touched, and so the reflex to touch him was shocking to me. “Er. Hello, Ratcliffe.”

Ratcliffe’s eyes narrowed and he seemed to search my face for a moment before turning to greet Miss Coburn with a warm handshake. 

“Claudia, good to see you too. It was… Ankara, this past autumn, wasn’t it, last time? It was kind of you to escort Booth.” 

“Well, John, when I heard you’d all but begged him to come!” She laughed. “You’re just lucky I’ve already been read into his club of the strange.”

I made a protesting sound at Miss Coburn’s teasing, and she smiled good-naturedly at me, raising an eyebrow and cutting her eyes back to Ratcliffe. He had ducked his head boyishly, laughing. It seemed exceedingly unlikely that he was blushing—surely it was just the sun.

We walked down the pier to a waiting car that would drive us out to the headquarters for the dig. Dr. Carver, the man who had originally discovered the site several years before the war and was now the current director, was the last scion of a wealthy family, and he’d built a large mansion called the Villa Pasiphaë. Ratcliffe had arranged for us to stay there. Ratcliffe introduced us to the driver, a local man named Myron, and waved me into the front passenger seat, for which I was initially grateful, given my height. As we drove, however, I realized the cost was that I had an excellent view of the steep cliffs and dizzying drops beside the road The road seemed far too narrow for safety, certainly at the speed Myron drove. I was glad we were ascending—the trip back down would be hellish.

In an effort to distract myself, I turned around to the back seat to ask Ratcliffe about the latest developments.

“Well, there was another tunnel collapse a few days ago. That’s how I got this,” he gestured to his injured arm. “But I was lucky.”

Myron snorted and said something in Greek too quickly for me to catch. I have always been better with reading and writing than conversation, in my native tongue as well as other languages. 

“I beg your pardon?” I asked. Miss Coburn laughed and Ratcliffe blushed in a way I couldn’t attribute to the sun.

“Apparently our Ratcliffe is being too modest.” Miss Coburn explained.

“No, really—” Ratcliffe said.

“He was hurt trying to get two other men out, one of whom is our friend Myron’s brother.”

Ratcliffe grimaced and shook his head. “We were all trying to get each other out, really. I was just unlucky about where the last wall came down. The bruising is bad, but nothing is broken, at least.”

Miss Coburn raised an eyebrow at him but let it pass. “Well. Tell us more about these tunnel collapses. What you wrote to Booth…” She paused, glancing at Myron, who didn’t take his eyes off the road, but frowned.

Ratcliffe sighed. “It’s not uncommon for there to be accidents, injuries—you know this as well as I do, Claudia. And the tunnel collapses aren’t entirely unexpected, especially in a climate like this, where it’s very dry until it isn’t. And that’s on top of the fact that the area is known to be tectonically active—there are periods when tremors are frequent.”

“But you think it’s more than that?”

“I don’t know. I just know that there have been some incidents that don’t seem quite right. And the workers who died, the injuries they had…”

We fell into grim silence, which was only interrupted by our arrival at the villa. 

The first person we met when we arrived at the Villa Pasiphaë was the aforementioned director of the site, Dr. Edward Carver. He was an energetic Englishman of the previous generation with some of the manners of the generation before that—he bowed over Miss Coburn’s hand, to her barely stifled amusement. He greeted us with enthusiasm, grabbing my hand and shaking it vigorously before I could find a way to avoid it, exclaiming, “Delighted to have you join us Mr. Booth! Ratty here has spoken highly of your skills and by God we certainly could use your help coming up with a system to archive these inscriptions we’re finding—entirely new languages, my boy! Come, come, let me show you around!”

With some workers ferrying our luggage into the house, Carver waved us towards a path that veered off from the side of the main house, into the brush and up through the hills for about half a mile. He offered his arm to Miss Coburn, which she took, humoring him, although they did immediately strike up a lively conversation about the challenges the climate was posing for preservation of the site. The path was only wide enough for two to walk abreast so Ratcliffe and I fell back a pace, following behind them.

“Apologies, Booth, I should have warned you about Carver.”

“He’s certainly… enthusiastic.”

“He’s a character, but he knows his work. He did most of the heavy lifting establishing the site and getting the dig started. They practically had to drag him away when the war closed things down.” Ratcliffe lowered his voice, “I spoke with him about the… accidents. He thinks it’s just the usual sorts of problems and that tragedies do sometimes happen. Won’t listen to any of the workers or the local foreman, doesn’t have time for superstition, he says. Jumping at shadows.” Ratcliffe sighed and then smiled self-deprecatingly. “He may be right. I may have brought you all the way out here for nothing, Booth.”

“Not— not nothing, Ratcliffe.”

He looked up at me, again with that strange searching look on his face. “No? Booth—”

We were interrupted by an exclamation from ahead of us. “Behold! Gentlemen, lady: Knossos!”

Carver had something of a showman in him, but he wasn’t entirely wrong to be dramatic. As we crested the next hill, the dig site spread out dramatically before us, covering a broad swath of the descending hillside down into an irregular plain. There were rough earthworks and tunnels dug in, and although it was cliché it really did remind me of nothing so much as the ant-farm that Dr. Lind kept in his office at the Parrington. 

As we descended into the site, Carver pointed out the various landmarks and points of interest. Apparently the whole area was honeycombed with tunnels, only some of which had been excavated—he didn’t mention how several had collapsed and were having to be slowly reopened. On the higher hill opposite us was what he thought would have been the throne room. He led us out onto the plain and to a central tented area that seemed to be the base of operations. 

As we approached we could hear raised voices.

The first voice was low but insistent, Greek-accented. “I’m telling you that no one will go down there after the last time!”

The second voice was much louder, Scottish-accented. “And I’m telling you that if someone doesn’t want to do their damned job, they don’t need to make up ridiculous superstitions—they can file a safety complaint or they can quit!”

As we ducked under the flap of the tent we seemed to be interrupting a stand-off. Two men were facing off, leaned over opposite sides of a table strewn with tools and diagrams. They straightened abruptly and turned to us as we entered the tent. There was an awkward silence.

Carver cleared his throat and said with forced jollity, “Gentlemen, Mr. Ratcliffe’s reinforcements have joined us! Miss Coburn, Mr. Booth, these are Dr. Duncan, my second-in-command.” He waved to the man on the right. “And Mr. Fasoulakis, our foreman.”

Fasoulakis was the first voice we’d heard, speaking up for the workers. He was a tall, slender man, dark of hair and eye. Although he had been scowling at Duncan when we walked in, he smiled readily enough in greeting, and the laugh-lines around his eyes suggested that this was his more natural expression. Duncan, on the other hand, seemed to have a permanently dour expression, based on the lines around his mouth and in his forehead, although he nodded politely at the introduction. He was also tall but broad of frame, with light reddish-blond hair and his pale complexion reddened by the sun.

There was an awkward pause, before Ratcliffe thankfully stepped in. “Claudia, why don’t Manolis and I show you the newest excavations, and Thomas can show Booth where to get started with the inscriptions?”

Ratcliffe, Kryiakos, and Miss Coburn trooped away, presumably towards the most recent tunnels. Dr. Carver departed as well, saying something about returning to the villa to deal with some administrative paperwork. “Have to do my part to keep us funded, eh?”

I found myself left with the dour Dr. Duncan. He grimaced at Dr. Carver’s back but then seemed to willfully shake off at least some of his ill-humor. He looked at me appraisingly and said, “Well, Mr. Booth. You come highly recommended, so let’s see what you make of our findings.”

He turned away before I could do more than stutter a protest about being highly recommended, heading for the back of the tent, where there was another long table set between a pair of corkboards. Everything was covered in sheets of paper, the ones on the table weighted down with all manner of things—trowels and brushes and other implements one might expect at an archaeological site but also a few rocks here-and-there. As I drew closer I could see that the papers were mostly rubbings taken from stone inscriptions. There were various colored tags and scrawled labels indicating the location in the dig site each rubbing had been taken.

“We’ve found them all over,” Duncan said, “We’re still arguing about the precise dating, but we all agree that the ones from the deepest levels are likely circa 2000 BC, maybe older.” He gestured to a set of rubbings pinned to the nearest corkboard. “We’ve been working with the theory that it’s a mix of ideographs and syllabic signs.” He waved to a page that contained a list of transcribed symbols with annotations in English and Modern Greek. “But we haven’t been able to make much progress.” His face darkened again. “Too many damned interruptions.”

“You mean, er, the…” I considered the argument we’d overheard. “Accidents?”

Duncan snorted. “Yes, I mean the accidents. There’s no need to conjure up beasties from the depths. Tunnel collapses are to be expected around here.”

“…Of course.”

Duncan looked at me suspiciously, as though looking for an argument, but as I made no further comment he subsided. He huffed a frustrated breath. “Still, so many so close together are bound to spook the workers,” he conceded, shaking his head, his expression turning sad. “And any death is a terrible loss.”

I made no reply to that, not knowing what to say about the deceased and not wanting to put us back on the route to an argument. Instead paused for what I hoped would seem like a respectful moment and then I nodded awkwardly towards the rubbings on the corkboard that seemed to be from the oldest part of the site. “Shall I get started?”

Duncan looked at the rubbings I had indicated, and his face darkened again. “You may as well start with these ones. We lost access to them in the first tunnel collapse, and Carver was probably more upset about that than about the injuries.” He snorted derisively, shaking his head. “At least we’ve almost re-opened that tunnel, which is what I need to get back to. I’ll leave you to it.” He gathered up some surveying equipment before heading out of the tent.

I sighed in relief—it was nice to be left alone again—and turned to the corkboard. The script that was depicted was very complex, with most signs consisting of multiple marks, some straight and some curved in on themselves. I turned to the table and picked up the notes detailing the translation progress thus far, looking forward to a quiet afternoon working on the puzzle of what the ancients had been trying to say. In much of my experience the written records people leave behind, whether ancient or more recent, are usually comfortingly mundane.

Usually but not always. I should have known it wouldn’t be mundane in the circumstances.

It was hours later, by the change in the light from bright early afternoon to the dimness of early evening, when Ratcliffe and Miss Coburn returned. They looked pensive.

“Ratcliffe’s right, Booth—there’s something off about the tunnel collapses. They seem too… random. If it were natural you’d expect some sort of pattern. And the damage is too localized. Did you find anything?”

“I think so.” I pointed to the top lines of the oldest inscriptions. “There’s something here about how the earth is… not in the power of man.” I pointed toward the lowest lines. “And here there’s something about a… force, I think. A monster, trapped. It’s not entirely clear..”

“But that’s just… a story? Theseus and the Minotaur?”

“A myth,” Ratcliffe said, frowning. “But a myth can be more than just a story, can’t it, Booth?” I wondered if he was thinking about his colleague who dreamed of the suffering of Trojan women.

“I— I can’t be sure. I think…” I paused, deeply uncertain about what I was going to suggest. “It… it seems like there are pieces missing here.” I pointed to the rubbings on the corkboard that had come from the oldest, deepest levels of the excavations. The ones that had been lost in the first tunnel collapse. “I think I might need to see the original inscriptions.”

I don’t know whether to call it luck or misfortune that the workers under Duncan’s direction finished re-opening those oldest, deepest tunnels just two days later, before I had come up with any alternative plan. Miss Coburn brought the news herself, returning late in the afternoon to the Villa Pasiphaë in the company of Mr. Fasoulakis and Mr. Duncan, the three of them engaged in a lively debate about the best way to approach the restoration of some recently uncovered murals. She split off from them to join Ratcliffe and I where we had been sitting on the large portico at the front of the house with Carver. He was regaling us with stories of how he’d first discovered the site, and how he had bulled his way through the bureaucracy of the Greek and Ottoman governments to return.

“Good news, gentlemen! Duncan and his team have reopened that first set of collapsed tunnels!” Miss Coburn called out to us as she approached.

Ratcliffe and I made appropriately impressed sounds, but I noticed that Carver didn’t seem nearly as happy as I would have thought he would be, at least at first. Indeed, he was strangely silent, his countenance darkening for a moment before he noticed us looking askance at him. At this, he brightened, and said with good cheer, “Well then, good work to Duncan and his team! Such success ought to be applauded indeed! I’ll see that the kitchens know we should have a bit of a party tonight!” He stood and headed back to the house.

Miss Coburn took the seat Carver had just vacated. “What’s our plan?”

She and Ratcliffe both looked at me. I tried desperately to think of an alternative, any alternative, but there was nothing for it. “I need to see the original inscriptions,” I said despairingly.

Ratcliffe nodded. “We’ll go tomorrow morning. Early—before everyone else is up.”

But there was still Carver’s party to get through. The kitchen staff carried out tables of food and arranged a rough banquet and bar on the lawn. I stayed on the sidelines as the local workers and the visiting students all ate and drank their fill, cavorting and toasting with raki, a local distillation that was, based on its effects and smell, extremely strong. If there was an element of apprehension simmering under the intoxication—something like relief that the repairs had been completed combined with anxiety about whether more would be needed again soon—well, certainly it wasn’t my place to comment.

I declined a glass of raki and Ratcliffe had only a small one. Miss Coburn, however, proceeded to outdrink both Duncan and Fasoulakis, to the point where I believe she received a joint offer of marriage from them both. It was strange indeed to see her in her element, beyond the confines of the Parrington. I was happy she was having fun, as I was still terribly apprehensive about our plan for the next day.

As the evening wore on and the dancing on the lawn in front of the villa grew more boisterous Ratcliffe caught my eye and nodded back towards the house. Relieved, I nodded in agreement, and we stood and made our way back inside. We climbed the central staircase and then turned to head for the eastern wing of the house, where I had been given a room next to Ratcliffe’s own.

“That was a bit much for me, so I can’t imagine you were enjoying yourself.”

I ducked my head. “Was it so obvious?”

Ratcliffe smiled reassuringly, “No, no, you were perfectly polite.” His smile turned into more of a smirk. “I think only Claudia or I were able to tell that you would have rather been elsewhere.”

I stammered and Ratcliffe waved it away, laughing. “Never mind, Booth, I was just teasing.”

I stared at him blankly. I couldn’t remember the last time someone had teased me without ill-intent.

He seemed taken aback by my silence. We had just reached the doors to our rooms but he didn’t move to go in. He turned and stared up at me. I couldn’t read the look on his face—regretful, perhaps, but what did he have to be sorry for? We weren’t children any more and he hadn’t been any of the worst of my tormentors. Moreover, he’d grown out of the careless bullying of our youth. We were… friends now, and it wasn’t his fault I was still so unused to friendship and the rituals that came with it, in spite of Miss Coburn’s weekly interventions.

He was standing very close, but still I felt no need to move away.

He sighed. “Still not sure of me, Booth?”

“N-no, it’s not you… I…” Frustrated, I wrung my hands and looked away.

He reached out toward me, but stopped without touching, hovering his hand over mine. I looked at his hand and then up at his face. His eyes were sharp, intense.

“Why did you come, Booth? Why did you come to Knossos?”

“The, the deaths…?” I sounded uncertain even to myself.

Ratcliffe paused for a moment, looking at me searchingly before pulling away, looking disappointed. “Yes. Well. Speaking of which. Get some sleep, we have an early start tomorrow.”

He turned and entered his room, shutting the door behind him without looking back. I stared at his closed door for several moments, before going into my own room. My thoughts were a jumbled whirl of anxiety over Ratcliffe and the tunnel collapses and our plan for the morning. I lay in bed and did not sleep.

As planned, we left the villa just as the sun, not yet risen, started to brighten the eastern sky behind the mountains. We made our way to the dig site in the dim dawn light and entered the newly restored tunnels into the oldest layers of excavation. 

Both Miss Coburn and Ratcliffe were carrying electric torches, but as we descended further, following the twisting and turning of the tunnels, the light they put out seemed to have less and less effect in holding back the darkness. The tunnel sloped down ahead of us, the ground growing more irregular the further we went. At first I could see where ancient paintings were being carefully uncovered, but as we continued the walls became more rough-hewn. I could see by the change in the color of the beams holding up the ceiling, when we passed the point of the first collapse.

It was some unknowable number of minutes further still before we reached the wall with the inscriptions. Miss Coburn and Ratcliffe shone their torches on the wall, and I leaned in for a closer examination. I could see the part of the inscription that had been recorded faithfully by the rubbings I had been working with for the last two days, and as I suspected, there was more here—a part had been left out. 

“Here, this is what was recorded but there was a part missing.”

Ratcliffe and Miss Coburn leaned closer. “What does it say?” Miss Coburn asked.

“And why was it left off?” Ratcliffe added, grimly.

“I’m not—not sure. The translation work is coming along well, even Duncan agrees, but…” I gestured towards the lines that had been present in the rubbing. “…This is the part I was telling you about—that we think is a record of tremors and earthquakes. But here.” I ran my finger along the next line, which had been missing. “This is…” I didn’t want to say it, but I’d seen enough of them, for my sins, even if this was a new lost language. There were certain constants in these rituals, as it had been my misfortune to discover. “It looks like… a summoning.”

As I said it, there was a terrible low grinding sound that rapidly climbed in volume.he ground started to tremble. Both of the torches flickered and went out, and the floor abruptly shifted under my feet. I reached out in the darkness, trying to grab onto Ratcliffe or Miss Coburn, abruptly terrified that I’d be left alone in the dark. I am sure I cried out, but I couldn’t hear anything over the bellowing of the earth.

When it ended, one of the torches slowly flickered back on. It had fallen to the ground, and dust sifting down from the ceiling caught sparkling in the beam.

Miss Coburn was first to recover, groping toward the torch, and calling out, “Booth? Ratcliffe?”

It took me a moment to find my voice. “Here.” I said, and she swung the torch toward me, dropping the beam away from my face when I flinched at the light in my eyes.

“Sorry, sorry. Ratcliffe?”

There was a coughing to my left. “Over here,” Ratcliffe called out hoarsely.

Miss Coburn swung the torch toward his voice and we found him fallen to the floor, half seated against the wall. He’d fared the worst of the three of us, which seemed unfair given that he’d already been injured. I was only mildly bruised from where I had fallen to the ground, and Miss Coburn was bleeding from a shallow cut to the scalp where she must have taken a glancing blow from the edge of a falling rock. But Ratcliffe had been standing next to one of the wooden support beams as it shattered, and it had flung several long, sharp splinters that had embedded themselves through his shirt and into his previously injured shoulder, as well as scoring lines along his ribs. 

I supported him on his uninjured side and held the torch as Miss Coburn checked Ratcliffe’s injuries. I could feel him trembling slightly, likely in shock. 

“Well, you’ll live, and you’re not bleeding too badly. We’ll need better first aid to dig out these splinters.” She hissed a breath in through her teeth. “Not much we can do about them now.”

With that done she sat back on her heels. We exchanged a look over Ratcliffe’s head, and I could see my concern mirrored on her face. Ratcliffe wasn’t bleeding heavily, it was true, but the wounds weren’t clean. He would need medical attention soon. 

I looked up, hoping that we weren’t trapped, that there would still be a way out. What I saw was worse than a simple tunnel collapse.

The way we had come was gone, but not filled in like a landslide. Instead, a smooth wall crossed the path by which we’d entered. A new pathway had appeared, as though the inscribed wall had rotated a quarter-turn. In the distance, in a light flickered—a torch, real, not electric, set into the wall.

Faintly came the sound of a human voice, chanting.

I stood carefully, trying not to jostle Ratcliffe as I got up. I moved toward the new pathway.

“Booth!” both Miss Coburn and Ratcliffe called after me. Miss Coburn scrambled to her feet and Ratcliffe used his good arm to push himself up using the tunnel wall for support. 

I turned back. “I think I have to…”

“You don’t have to do anything alone, Booth,” Ratcliffe said, staggering forward and nearly falling before Miss Coburn caught him, bracing herself against his uninjured side. I found myself once again and without conscious intention reaching for him as well. I stopped myself, with my hand hanging uselessly in the air for a moment before I dropped it and turned back toward the new pathway, with its torches and chanting.

“I think we have to… there’s no other way to go,” I said, helplessly.

And so we went. I led the way with the torch, and Miss Coburn followed behind with Ratcliffe. The path was descending, but unlike the tunnels we had followed it was no longer maze-like, just a continuous clockwise curve, spiraling slowly downwards. The distance that we walked seemed to go on and on, far enough that if the chanting voice was indeed coming from somewhere ahead of us we shouldn’t have been able to hear it from where we started. There always seemed to be a light just ahead of us, but we never passed another torch in the wall.

The pathway eventually flattened out and I began to hope—and fear—that we were nearing the end. The chanting finally seemed to get clearer and louder, and a second sound started to emerge from below the sound of the chanting: A slow drumming sound, like bone striking stone, rhythmic and repetitive. 

The walls opened out and the ceiling climbed away from above our heads and we emerged into a small chamber. The floor was covered with markings I recognized as being part of a summoning ritual, quite likely the one described in the inscriptions we had just been examining. And there, within a binding circle, was the source of that hard, hollow sound: the Minotaur, pacing back-and-forth.

It was deeply, terrifyingly monstrous, in the oldest sense of the word: it seemed unnatural for all that it was made up of natural parts, as described in myth and depicted in numerous artworks. The body of a large and powerful man, with the head,hooves, and tail of a bull. But that description did not capture its visceral unnaturalness. The way the knees bent backwards, and how below the knees the legs became shaggy with dense, dark hair and tapered into hooves. Or the awful places where the human neck and shoulders swelled with the musculature necessary to support that broad, heavy head, crowned with wicked horns, curving up towards the earthen ceiling. Nor the horror of its mad, savage eyes. 

It looked like it should have smelled rank with sweat and musk. But no—it smelled like dirt and rock, like turned earth. A cold, damp smell, like a tomb.

I was so caught up by the horror of the Minotaur that I neglected to look for the summoner until Ratcliffe’s voice called me back.

“Carver! My God, what are you doing? What have you done?”

I looked past the Minotaur and there, indeed, was Carver. He had been chanting but stopped at Ratcliffe’s exclamation.

“I’m doing what I should have done last time! Finding a way to protect the site! So that no one can take it again!”

The worst part was that he didn’t look at all different from any of our previous interactions. Eager, delighted with himself.

As we stared at him in horror, though, his face slowly darkened. 

“But I see that you don’t approve.”

“People have been hurt, Carver. People have died!” 

“I’m still working on the translation, I’ll bring the beast under control. Besides, accidents happen on every dig. The cost of discovery!” he said, brightening and gesturing encouragingly. When we remained horrified, he shook his head as if disappointed. “I am sorry, Ratcliffe, Miss Coburn, Mister Booth. You shouldn’t have come.”

He began chanting again. The Minotaur, which had been pacing all the while, stopped, lowering its head, tossing it back and forth, raising its human hands to its wide, inhuman ears. It shuddered, and Carver kept chanting, more insistently, louder. The Minotaur threw its head back and let out a terrible, bellowing cry, and then struck the ground, stamping its hooves.

The ground responded, the earth heaving. The entrance behind us closed with a grinding sound, and the walls around us trembled, even as the other side of the chamber where Carver stood remained still. Miss Coburn threw herself and Ratcliffe to the ground to avoid being crushed by one of the large pieces of stone that started to fall from the ceiling.

To this day I do not know why I did what I did. Perhaps it was because our deaths seemed so assured that even this insane act couldn’t make things worse. Perhaps it was spite: if we were going to die then I would see Carver taken with us.

I stumbled forward toward the Minotaur, falling to the ground. I reached out and dragged my hand through the binding circle, breaking the ward keeping the Minotaur trapped.

The change was instantaneous. The stamping and bellowing paused and the ponderous head tilted as though in thought. One ear twitched and a shudder went through those massive shoulders. The Minotaur huffed a snorting breath. Then it turned toward Carver, lowering those wicked horns again. 

Carver was slow to realize what was happening. “What have you done?” He gaped at me in disbelief before turning to run, from the charging Minotaur, far too late. He was caught on those horns and gored, screaming, then tossed into the wall with a sickening crunch, where his screams stopped abruptly. 

In the silence that followed, I could hear Ratcliffe’s pained breaths. As the Minotaur turned to us, Miss Coburn let out a low moan, quickly stifled. I could feel my spirit quail; whatever insanity or spite that had given me the courage to break the binding circle had fled, and I was deeply afraid.

The Minotaur approached us slowly, its hooves making a clopping sound on the stone floor. It didn’t lower its horns, and it held its arms spread. As it approached, I realized that we were of a height, in a way—at least at eye-level. It had seemed much taller, but I realized that impression was due to its bulk, the hulking shoulders, the massive neck. Those wide, curving horns.

It stopped a pace away from me. Its eyes were not maddened any longer but dark, wide, and wet. Not a beast’s eyes, but a man’s, sad and strange in that bovine face.

We stared at each other. I do not know what it was thinking. I was thinking only that I wished we could leave and live.

After three long breaths, the Minotaur stepped back and to the side. It snorted and nodded toward the wall opposite to where Carver’s crumpled corpse lay, and with a grinding noise the room changed shape again, a long dark hallway appearing, a single torch guttering in the distance. The Minotaur looked at us and gestured with one arm, stamping one of its hooves.

“Booth!” Miss Coburn hissed. “Help me get him up!”

I tore my eyes away, bending and reaching to help pull Ratcliffe to his feet. He hissed in a breath through clenched teeth, but was able to stand with Miss Coburn bracing him up on one side and me on the other. Together we staggered toward the distant torch. 

We didn’t have Ariadne’s thread to follow, but it seemed like the maze—or its monster—wanted us out. There was only one path, lit at intervals by torches set in the walls. As we walked, from behind us—initially distant but growing slowly closer—was the sound of stone grinding on stone, the earth moaning and rumbling. Still, I tried to take comfort in the fact that the path led us straight ahead, not turning or twisting, onwards and upwards, the torches getting further and fewer between. Eventually they faded to a spot of sunlight that drew rapidly closer until we emerged blinking onto a patch of hillside far above the dig site. It was dawn; it was as though we had spent no time at all in the Labyrinth, as though time were suspended within. 

The grinding and rumbling of the earth that had been following behind us increased in volume suddenly and the ground pitched beneath our feet, throwing us forward in a heap of limbs. We huddled on the ground, covering our heads as a small shower of stones and dirt poured down on us. It subsided after a moment, and when we looked back there was no evidence of the exit from which we had come.

We sat in silence for some time, I do not know how long. The sun continued to rise. Eventually, we heard the sound of distant voices calling from further down the hillside. Miss Coburn was the first to rouse, climbing slowly to her feet and calling back, “Hello! We’re up here!” She turned and started picking a path down towards the dig site, calling behind her, “Wait here. Booth, keep him here.” 

Ratcliffe tried to stand as well but subsided when I pressed him back down by his uninjured shoulder. I ducked my head, ostensibly to check his wounds, but mostly to avoid eye contact. He was silent, watching me intensely. 

“You saved us, Booth.”

“I… I didn’t…”

He reached his hand toward where mine was hovering ineffectually over his wounds, again stopping just before he touched me. It had the same effect as if he had, stilling my fidgeting. He ducked his head to try to catch my eyes and I was caught. His gaze was very sharp, but his voice was as soft as I’ve ever heard it, before or since. “Booth… Why did you come?”

I was frozen, caught. “I… Ratcliffe…”

He looked at me patiently. As though he could wait for a very long time. I didn’t have the heart to deny him any longer. 

“I was worried.”

“That the deaths were supernatural?”

I nodded, jerkily, and then immediately contradicted myself, shaking my head. “No, not—not just that. Ratcliffe… John…” I stared at him beseechingly, hoping he would understand.

After a moment of searching my face keenly his gaze cleared. He smiled, more softly than his usual. “Alright, Booth. It’s alright. I understand.”

He reached for me very slowly, and I let him. He touched my hand, gently, then my shoulder, leaning forward. Tumbled to the ground as we were, the difference in our heights was not insurmountable—he finally took my jaw in both hands and drew me down, just for a moment, stolen, before the calls of our rescuers interrupted us.

**Author's Note:**

> This fic has been converted for free using [AOYeet!](https://aoyeet.space)
> 
> At last, my classics minor comes in handy! 
> 
> I should note that this is NOT Crete as we know it in our world, but Booth's world has always seemed a step to the left to me? So the actual Villa Ariadne became the Villa Pasiphaë, etc. The real history of the site is very interesting, as are the people who worked there! Some resources I used for research/inspiration:
> 
> Wikipedia (lol of course) for refreshing but also, wow these are thorough!  
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knossos>  
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knossos_(modern_history)>  
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minotaur>
> 
> But what if it DID, though?  
> <https://cosmosmagazine.com/archaeology/labyrinthine-investigation-concludes-the-minotaur-s-lair-never-existed/>
> 
> This is fascinating and I took some names from here:  
> <https://www.penn.museum/sites/expedition/sir-arthur-evans-at-kommos/>


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